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RP Pool Guidelines for Researchers
From: Jacqueline Newbold, RP Coordinator
Office: Room 434, Psychology Building
Office Hours: By appointment
E-mail: rp@uga.edu
Website: http://uga.sona-systems.com
The RP Pool will open for data collection on Monday, June 8th.
The RP Pool officially closes at 5:00 PM on Friday, July 24th.
This document provides general guidelines about the research pool. In addition, this document
describes rules and regulations that researchers must follow in order for the use of the pool to be
fair and equitable for everyone in the department. For more information on how to post studies
or to troubleshoot problems with Sona, you can check the Sona documentation on the UGA
Psychology Department website (www.uga.edu/psychology) or you can email the RP
coordinator for specific questions at rp@uga.edu.
Table of Contents
Topic
Page Number
General Information
Requisition
Research Experience Requirement
Guidelines
Use of Lotteries
Record of Participation
Consent
Debriefing
Cancellation
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Information on the RP website
What Students Must Do
What Researchers Must Do
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General Information
In order to have access to the RP Pool, you must either be
1) A faculty member or graduate student in the psychology department who is in good
standing with the department,
OR
2) A faculty member outside the department who is in active collaboration with a faculty
member of the psychology department. Prior collaborations with faculty members in the
psychology department do not merit access to the RP Pool.
Research participants may be obtained from students enrolled in Elementary Psychology (PSYC
1101), General Psychology (PSYC 1030H), and Psychology of Adjustment (PSYC 2101). (The
particular composition of the RP Pool may vary from semester to semester, but these are the
courses that comprise the pool.)
Research participation by these students is intended to be a learning experience for them. The
students' research orientation requirement (whether it be participation in research or summarizing
research articles) is basically the equivalent of the lab section in, for example, a physics course—
it is intended to familiarize the students with current research topics and techniques.
Because many researchers depend on this source for research participants, all users of the system
must treat research participants with courtesy and consideration. Care should also be taken to
ensure that the students' participation is a learning experience. Investigators who fail to observe
the guidelines described in this document may be denied access to the RP Pool.
Requisition
Prior to running any research participants, prospective investigators must
(a)
Receive approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). If you need an application
for IRB approval, you can obtain one through their web page at:
http://www.ovpr.uga.edu/docs/forms/compliance/NEW-IRB-Application.doc
(b)
Set up your experiment on Sona Systems, once you get done it will ask you to send a
request to activate the study. Make sure to send me this request in order to activate your
study.
(c)
Included in this request, make sure to forward me an email indicating IRB approval. You
will receive verification of your approval from me once you have forwarded this
information.
Research Experience Requirement
All students in Psychology 1101, 1030H, and 2101 are required to participate in 6.5 hours of
orientation to receive a class grade.
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(Students are NOT required to participate in psychology studies. Alternatively, they may choose
to summarize research articles. Each article summary is worth 1 hour of credit, and should be at
least 2 pages in length. A student may also turn in only one 1-page summary if a 1/2 credit is
needed. If a student chooses to do such a summary, he or she must clearly indicate on the top of
the article that it is for 1/2 credit.)
NOTE: Students can only complete 2 hours of credit with online studies.
Please observe the following guidelines:

Inducements may not be posted on the experimental listing (e.g., "This experiment takes
only 15 MINUTES" or "Fun, Fun, Fun"). In addition, the RP Committee has decided that
students may not receive both course credit and monetary compensation for participation in
the same study. In addition, lotteries are not permitted (see below). This is seen as an extra
inducement, and would give unfair advantage to one study over all the others. The RP Pool
was established to give all researchers equal access to research participants.

Post sessions 4-5 days in advance of when you require research participants. Research
participants are often willing to participate in studies scheduled for evenings or weekends.
The doors of the Psychology Building are open until 6:00 PM on weekdays. If you plan to
run later than 6:00 PM or on weekends, you or your assistant must meet the research
participants at the door and let them in. Departmental policy forbids propping the doors
open.

If for any reason you cannot keep your appointment with a research participant, it is your
responsibility to contact him or her at least 24 hours in advance. If you are unable to
contact the research participant, award him or her credit on the schedule. The research
participant is still eligible to participate in your study and receive another credit, which you
would then award through the timeslot modify option on Sona.

Researchers must award credit on a regular basis throughout the semester. Every two weeks,
researchers must grant credit for participants in their studies. It can be stressful for students
to have pending credit for extended periods of time. In order to make the process as
accommodating as possible for the students, we are requiring that researchers regularly grant
credit. Failure to do so will result in revocation of RP pool privileges until the situation is
corrected.

Researchers using the RP Pool are not allowed to go into PSYC 1101, 1030H, or 2101
classes to recruit participants for research projects, even if the instructor has agreed to let you
do so. The only form of recruitment allowed is the sign-up procedure on the web site. This
ensures that everyone has equal access to the RP Pool.

Participants have the option of not participating in a study or terminating participation at any
point during the session. If a participant refuses to participate, give the participants the full
amount of credit for participating in the study (or for participating in the first session for
multi-part studies). Participants should not be penalized in any way for deciding not to
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participate in a study. For example, if a student shows up for a 1.0 credit study, reads the
consent form, and subsequently decides that he or she does not want to participate or signs
the consent form and later changes his or her mind (e.g. because the student is apprehensive
about taking a pill), the student still should receive the full amount of 1.0 credits anyway.

Regarding the number of credits that participants receive for participating in a study,
participants should always receive at least the amount they signed up for. It is the
responsibility of the researcher to provide a reasonably accurate estimate of how long studies
will take for participants to complete on average. If participants end up taking longer than
what they signed up for, the credit should be adjusted accordingly. For example, if a study is
worth 2.0 credits, but a participant takes 2 hours and 15 minutes to complete the study, he or
she should receive 2.5 credits. This adjustment can be easily for each individual on your
schedule (changing it for 1 person will not affect the entire list).

Psychology faculty and graduate students are allowed to have accounts on the Sona Systems
website. To request an account, email the RP Coordinator (RP@uga.edu) with the name and
email to be associated with the account. Undergraduate research assistants are not permitted
to have researcher accounts on the Sona Systems website. Usually, the best option is for a
researcher to create a Lab login that will be used for many researchers and attached to many
studies. The login and password would be lab-specific and would be what undergraduate
research assistants use to post study times, credit participants, etc.
Use of Lotteries
Although IRB sometimes approves the use of lotteries in experimental research, users of the RP
Pool may not use lotteries because the RP Committee believes that such use violates the notion
of equal access to research participants by all users of the RP Pool. You may not allow your
participants to "gamble" with their RP credits.
Online Studies
In order to ensure equal access to the participant pool, participants are only allowed to complete
2 hours of online studies. After they reach their 2 hour maximum, they must participate in
studies that take place in person in the psychology building or other locations.
Additionally, researchers are prohibited from creating a traditional study and emailing
participants links to complete the study. Investigators who fail to observe the guidelines
described in this document may be denied access to the RP Pool.
Record of Participation
1.
If a research participant fails to show up, this is called an "unexcused no-show." Turning
in no-shows is not left to the discretion of the researcher; it is required. A research
participant who fails to keep an appointment has credit deducted from his or her total.
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Research participants who arrive late are generally given an excused no-show, but they
are not given credit either.
2.
Each research participant is entitled to one half-credit (0.5) for each half-hour or part of a
half-hour of participation. For example, if your study takes 20 minutes, the research
participant receives one half-credit. If your study takes 75 minutes, the research
participant receives 1.5 credits. You may not give extra credits (e.g., 3 credits for 2
hours) as an inducement to get students to participate in a study.
3.
Award your credits on a regular basis, preferably at least once a week (or every time you
view your schedule). All credit submissions are due by 5:00 PM on the last day of the
pool. Researchers who turn in credit submissions late or run studies while the RP
pool is closed may lose their RP pool privileges for the next semester.
Consent Forms
Each research participant must sign a legally effective informed consent statement that has been
approved by IRB before participating in a study.
Debriefing
All research participants are to be provided with a clear post-study debriefing. This must
constitute a learning experience for the research participant. This usually consists of a full
explanation of everything that happened during the session, what was being studied, and a
summary of your hypotheses. Phrasing of the presentation must be in the manner understandable
to the student, and questions should be encouraged and answered.
If deception was used in the study, you must explain three things to the participants: 1) what you
did not tell them, 2) why you did not tell it to them, and 3) what your hypotheses/predictions are.
Cancellation
Students may cancel their appointments without penalty by logging onto the web site at least 24
hours in advance of the appointment. In cases where the cancellation is received less than 24
hours in advance, the system will not allow the participant to cancel. For such emergencies, the
participant will contact the Investigator directly to cancel the appointment.
In general, unexcused no-shows should only be given in extreme circumstances. If participants
make a reasonable attempt to contact the Investigator in advance of the study, the participant
should be given an excused no-show and allowed to sign up again at a later date. If participants
fail to show up at all or do not contact the researcher, an unexcused no-show is appropriate.
As a reminder, if the researcher has to cancel appointment times within 24 hours,
participants should be awarded credit for the study automatically.
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Information about the RP website
Both researchers and students will access the RP Pool through the following site:
http://uga.sona-systems.com
There is a document on the Psychology Department website on how to use the Sona
Systems website. Check this document for extra information on how to post and
administer studies and how to troubleshoot issues.
What students must do
Students will be asked to register themselves into the RP web site at the beginning of the
Semester. Once registered, they will be able to sign up for studies and view their credit listings
at any time. Students will sign up for experimental sessions exclusively on this site. When
logged on, RPs will first see a list of active studies. Each study listing appears on a separate line
containing the study number, the supervisor, the experimenter, phone number, eligibility
restrictions, and study title. An icon on the left indicates if times are available for sign-ups. By
clicking this icon, the student sees a list of sessions for the given experiment. The student signs
up by simply choosing a time and clicking the icon for that time. The student then receives
immediate confirmation of their appointment via e-mail and an e-mail reminder 24 hours before
the appointment. RPs can only sign up for a particular study once, unless multiple sessions are
required or the researcher allows them to sign up more than once.
Cancellations follow the same procedure as sign-ups: a RP finds his or her individual
session in the list of sessions for a specific study, and cancels by clicking the “Cancel” icon. The
system will not allow a RP to cancel within 24 hours of his or her session. The only way a RP
can cancel within this time period is to contact the experimenter associated with the study, who
then can cancel them manually.
What researchers must do
To post an experiment, check the schedule, or award credits, researchers should enter the
web site listed above. You will be asked for a User ID and Password. If you do not have a User
ID or Password, e-mail the RP coordinator at RP@uga.edu and the RP Coordinator will provide
you with this information. When you go to the front page of the site (the login page), you may
see a link to request an account. This form is only for participants. Do not use this form to
request an account, as participant accounts have an entirely different set of privileges, and the
privileges are not appropriate for a researcher.